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Buy a digital subscription Go to the Digital EditionThe palm trees of Athens have been under siege from city planners and a deadly parasite, but the inventive artist Navine G Khan-Dossos has created a space in an abandoned museum attic where her stylised palms can flourish. By Thomas Roueché. Photographs by Nikos Kokkas and Yiannis Hadjislanis
Athens is a city rich in contradictions. Birthplace of western European culture, it was for centuries at the heart of the eastern Ottoman Empire, capital of a kingdom, then a republic, and in recent years emblematic of the profligate “South” of the EU. “Oh, it’s very European!” says the visitor, with the same surprise we hear from tourists in Istanbul. And it is perhaps through its urban aesthetic that we first superficially understand a city such as this.
When the artist Navine G Khan-Dossos moved to Athens in late 2015, she began to hear the story of the city’s once-endemic palm trees, which tells how, at some moment of historic upheaval – with the lifting of the “Ottoman yoke”, or during Nazi occupation, or in the years of the Junta – a decision was taken to root out from public spaces the ultimate symbol of the East. The palm, so evocative of sun-drenched luxury, had no place in the western-facing kingdom or republic of Greece…
Imagine a Palm Tree is Navine’s response to the myths surrounding the palms of Athens. At the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art, she has revived the top-floor café, forced to close by government budget cuts. A mural of stylised palms symbolises the vertical axis of the city: the leaves spread up into the realms of Wi-Fi, CCTV and telephones, the roots down towards the underground system and networks of cables and fibre optics. The symbols of technology are woven together with Islamic-style pattern and organic forms to create layers of aesthetic and conceptual detail. Fixing on the palm tree as a lodestar reveals the complexities and contradictions of the Mediterranean city, ever strung out between conflicting ideas of where, precisely, on what civilisational longitude, it lies.
An ambitious new work of classical music – based on Howard Blake’s enchanting score for ‘The Snowman’ – has just received its world premiere. This concert is just one of many achievements by Talent Unlimited, a Turkish charity that gives budding young virtuosi a helping hand. Tony Barrell tells the story. Photographs: Monica Fritz
And the award for most versatile, most nourishing and best-loved ingredient goes to… the humble chickpea. Berrin Torolsan explores its history and its limitless talent to entertain us in a multitude of different roles
A fascinating exhibition at the Istanbul Research Institute that explores a dog’s life in Ottoman Istanbul and the transformation of attitudes as Westernisation takes hold
Yusuf Franko Kusa used brush and pen and position to lampoon and pull the strings of Ottoman high society. Unseen for 60 years, his caricatures are now the subject of a fascinating exhibition in Istanbul, writes K Mehmet Kentel
At one time all roads led to Erzurum, a key stop on a great caravan route and a strategic bastion against invasion. Today it is a remote city on Turkey’s Asian frontier with an important history crying out to be discovered. In Part 2 of Cornucopia’s Beauty and the East series, the photographer Brian McKee continues his tour of eastern Anatolia in Erzurum as Scott Redford leads us from Turkic citadel to Mongol minarets.
It was for centuries the preserve of sultans, extolled by the ancients, sought after in the harem, a staple of palace kitchen and pharmacy. More precious than gold, mastic brought fortune and fame to the island of Chios, today the world’s sole source of this ‘Arabic gum’. Now, thanks to a pioneering initiative, the Turkish shores across the water will be green with mastic groves. Text and photographs by Berrin Torolsan
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